Things We Don't Say About Food Stamps

Most Read

It should be a surprise to approximately nobody that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — aka food stamps — helps lower the poverty rate. Give people help paying for food, and their incomes will increase. This does not seem difficult to understand....

The program lifted the average poor person's income up about six percent closer to the line over the length of the study, making poverty less severe. When the benefits were included in the income of families with children, the result was that children below the threshold moved about 11 percent closer to the line.

But, of course, it's not as sparkling or useful a political meme as The Culture Of Dependency or those lazy poor people buying steaks, vodka, Cadillacs, and flat-screen TV's with their food stamps, so arguing that food stamps actually, sort of, you know, maybe work is an argument to be made subtly, and only to the right audiences, and preferably not on TV.